Togetherness by Weinberger

Weinberger told of how important and useful the web became on September 11th. The news kept repeating the same horrific events over and over, while the web became a source for others to connect. I can relate to this because I always get my news and information for the internet. I hate watching the news because it is always about horrible things such as murders, shootings, and kidnappings. Online you can find so much more information than just the horrible things. The internet is able to connect us more because we can actually connect with people through it. When you are watching TV, you are usually just glued to it, therefore it's just you and the TV. We are all so proud to be individuals, sometimes almost using it as a threat, for example defiantly stating "I am unique." But once we are in a crowd we get lost. We are all just part of the common public. Being defined by categories: race, gender, age, etc. angers us. We hate to be stereotyped. As a whole, our society is obsessed with the media. We put celebrities up on a pedestal, like they are not human like the rest of us. But on the web, fame is not important. It is more of a community, you never see the face of the people you are talking to, and nowadays everyone has crazy names for their emails and usernames. You can chose any thing you want, so it's all a guessing game. The web is grouped by interest. You go onto websites that you are interested in and find people there who have the same interests as you do. People join the web to become active, they want to be active members of a web community. Everything is online nowadays, you can join a bookclub, find a penpal, do ratings. The web is a crowd of people, but you can distinctly see each and every one of them. It's amazing to see how the web has become so prominent in today's society. You can do anything and everything online these days.